Agile Banking

@ppalavilli has one of the clearest explanations I've seen on how ACH payments work. It shows the complexity of traditional payment systems in all its glory and really why we also desperately need something like OpenTransact.

Square does look nice and shows what you can innovate with a mix of new and old technology.

Unfortunately most of the hype about it has been that it supposedly is a new "Payment System" and it really isn't. It is a democratization of point of sale technology for old payment systems.

I came up with this screen layout yesterday. Basically, you browse your available currencies at the bottom part, with the flick of a finger. You can see your current balance for every currency.

Assuming you already selected a person to trade with, and that person is online and accepted the trade request, this is what you will see. At this point, you drag the requested currency to the top area, and click the (+) or (-) buttons to increase or decrease the value traded.

The person on the other side does the same thing, but you both see this happening in real-time. The application also calculates the exchange rate for you and puts it in a comment at the bottom of the trading area.

When both sides are OK with the trade figures, both need to tap the “Trade” button next to the name of the person. This user interface allows for some sort of “Haggling” to take place

I would love to get comments on this. Also I think it would be useful to add a “Trade Chat”, so you can actually talk about the trade taking place. This chat would be recorded by default (with a “Go off the record” option), and be linked with the trade, for future reference.

Great idea for an iPhone OpenTransact Wallet.

We've seen similar micropayment systems before like Peppercoin etc. The implementation is whats important. Will definitely be trying it out. Sign up for the Beta here.

PayPal said a ban on personal transactions to and from India will continue for "at least a few months" while the online payment service tries to resolve a problem with local regulators.

The ban, which began Saturday and caught PayPal users in the country by surprise, relates to whether personal payments constitute "remittances," or money sent home by people working abroad, the company said in a blog post Tuesday.

"We temporarily suspended these services to respond to enquiries from the Indian regulators, specifically questions on whether personal payments constitute remittances into India," PayPal said.

The company is working with regulators and bank processing companies to resolve the problem as soon as possible, it said. But "personal payments to and from India will be suspended for at least a few months until we fully resolve the questions from the Indian regulators."

More details about PayPal's India issues.

This is unfortunately how it works in the payment world. You think you are following the rules and all of a sudden your business is halted and your users in trouble because some bureaucrat decided to make a name for himself.

PayPal isn’t working properly in India. eBay’s electronic payment juggernaut appears to be blocking personal transactions to or from accounts of India-based users. It is reversing personal transactions; transactions involving businesses are still allowed.

An understandable uproar today as personal account holders resident in India have been hopefully temporarily cut off by PayPal. I wasn't even aware that PayPal was relatively integrated with the Indian banking system which I am impressed about. But this does not surprise me.

Reading through the comments it looks like it is the Royal Bank of India the central bank who are behind it.

This is not the first time this has happened. The RBI famously declared E-Gold illegal.

TIt has been brought to the notice of the Reserve Bank of India that an impression is sought to be created among the members of public by some agencies/persons that transactions involving "e-gold", purportedly an electronic currency, are freely permitted in India and that "e-gold" has the status of a foreign currency. The Reserve Bank has also come across a recent pamphlet on the subject, circulated along with a newspaper, which states that non-resident Indians use "e-gold" to send remittances into India.

 

The Reserve Bank clarifies for the information of public that "e-gold" is not a currency of any sovereign state. Use of "e-gold" in any transaction is violative of current regulations in force in India. Members of the public, banks, money changers and other financial institutions are, therefore, cautioned against the use of "e-gold" as a currency in their transactions.

India has foreign exchange limitations. From what I was able to find quickly private citizens are limited to taking out $10,000/y. This is almost certainly why they were banned.

Great local currency related design project. My favorite are the Little Italy Favors.

Kiva is one of those companies that has really captured the imagination of people here in the US. I have always been critical about it, in particular the lack of interest payments to lenders.

I believe it is not sustainable in the long run without interest payments to promote good business practices. Secondly I think too many of the Partners don't pass the smell test on being serious about microfinance.

So now we find out that the Kiva model has been essentially a fiction.

Kiva, a nonprofit organization, promoted itself as a link between small individual lenders and small individual borrowers like Maryjane Cruz in the Philippines, who recently sought a $625 loan to support her family’s farm.

But Mr. Roodman’s blog post said that lenders like Mr. Kristof were not making direct loans. Borrowers like Ms. Cruz already have loans from microfinance institutions by the time their pictures are posted on Kiva’s Web site.

Thus, the direct person-to-person connection Kiva offered was in fact an illusion. Kiva’s lenders were actually backstopping microfinance institutions, and since Kiva and other online giving and lending models pride themselves on their transparency, Mr. Roodman and others suggested it might better explain what its lenders’ money — about $100 million over four years — was really doing.

For something like KIVA to work and not be just another charity, it has to make it real. It has to be a real Person 2 Person lending site and not a person 2 NGO lending site. It has to be 100% transparent about everything. The way this works I don't know if you can trust repayment rates at all.

So companies make bad decisions. Charities also often decide to err on the side of a good story as opposed to the truth. However this could set back the success of real p2p micro lending sites several years and that is what I find most sad.

Tom has made a great screencast showing CapCard running ontop of OsCurrency.

@dgwbirch interviews @eisokant about Twollars - "The currency of Appreciation".